FEC’d UP - BY THE NUMBERS

1. FEAR — “I don’t feel safe or informed”

Fear shows up as uncertainty, job insecurity, silence, disengagement, and withdrawal.

✔ Fear → Silence → Bad Decisions

85% of employees report they do not feel safe speaking up at work.

📊 Source: Gallup, Workplace Safety Report (2024)

✔ Silence costs U.S. companies an estimated $1.2 trillion per year in mistakes, bad decisions, and preventable failures.

📊 Source: VitalSmarts “Silence Fails” analysis (updated references through 2023)

✔ Fear of layoffs → Performance Drop

Productivity drops up to 30% when people fear job loss.

📊 Source: SHRM & APA Workplace Stress Studies (2023–2024)

✔ Fear → Turnover → Cost

51% of employees experiencing chronic job insecurity look for new jobs within 3 months.

📊 Source: LinkedIn Workplace Trends (2024)

2. EGO — “This threatens my identity, competence, or status”

Ego shows up as turf wars, defensiveness, blame-shifting, refusal to collaborate, or leadership arrogance.

✔ Ego-driven managers cause turnover

57% of people leave their jobs because of their manager.

📊 Source: McKinsey "The Great Attrition" follow-up (2023)

Translation: Leader ego = attrition.

✔ Competence threats spike resistance

When people feel their competence is threatened (new system; new role; new process), resistance increases up to 60%

📊 Source: Gartner Change Resistance Index (2023–2024)

✔ Ego shuts down innovation

Teams with ego-centric leaders underperform collaborative teams by up to 50% on complex problem-solving.

📊 Source: Harvard/MIT meta-analysis on leadership humility (2022)

3. CULTURE— “This isn't how we do things here”

Culture shows up as tradition, habit, norms, unwritten rules, and the organizational immune system.

✔ Culture mismatch → Change failure

70% of failed transformations are due to cultural resistance, not strategy.

📊 Source: McKinsey Organizational Health Index (2023)

✔ Toxic Culture > Pay

“Toxic culture” is 10.4x more predictive of employees quitting than compensation.

📊 MIT Sloan Toxic Culture Report (2022–2023 updates)

✔ Culture debt = performance debt

Companies with weak cultures experience:

• 3x higher turnover

• 2x higher burnout

• lower customer satisfaction

📊 Source: HBR Culture Research Summary (2023)

4. CHANGE FATIGUE — The Accumulation of F, E, & C

Not a separate category — this is what happens when FEC accumulates.

✔ Change fatigue at historic highs

76% of employees report change fatigue in 2024.

📊 Source: Gartner State of the Workplace (2024)

✔ Employees experiencing change fatigue are 3.2x more likely to resist new change.

📊 Gartner (2024)

✔ Organizations experiencing chronic change fatigue see a 25%–45% drop in:

• engagement

• trust

• productivity

📊 Source: APA Workplace Trends (2023)

You didn’t come this far to stop

5. PSYCHOLOGICAL UNSAFETY — The outcome of unmanaged FEC

This is the purest FEC metric.

✔ Only 3 in 10 employees feel psychologically safe at work.

📊 Source: Gallup, 2024

✔ Psychological unsafety → massive cost

Teams with low psychological safety deliver:

• 27% lower performance

• 50% more errors

• higher turnover intentions

📊 Source: Google Project Aristotle (updated citations), APA 2023

This is FEC embodied.

And it's costing you - big time!